Video content can be distributed from a provider as video on demand (VOD), time-shifted television, live television, media such as a digital video disc (DVD), motion pictures distributed to theaters as digital video signals, and as electronic content distributed to computing devices. Video content can be broadcast over the air as digital signals, transmitted via satellite, and streamed, downloaded, and uploaded via communications networks such as the Internet.
Given the broad distribution of such video content and growing proliferation of viewing and playback devices for viewing such video content, providers and distributors of video content often employ video-advertising techniques to insert advertisements into video content.
Prior solutions for inserting advertisements into video content include placing linear advertisements into the video content. Linear advertisements are inserted manually or at predetermined points or times within video content. Linear advertisements capture the entire screen the video content is being viewed on and stop or interrupt playback of the video content while the advertisements are playing. Linear advertisements may be inserted as pre-rolls to be played before the video content begins playing, as mid-rolls, which requires the video content to be paused at some point in order to play the advertisements, or as post-rolls played after the video content. Linear advertisements are obtrusive in that they capture the entire screen being used to view video content and interrupt the video content being played.
Another prior solution includes placing non-linear advertisements into video content such that the video content is played while simultaneously showing the non-linear advertisements. Although non-linear advertisements are typically less obtrusive than linear advertisements, their reliance on predetermined screen locations still results in obtrusive placements by covering important elements of a video scene being viewed. For example, by placing non-linear advertisements in predetermined or predefined locations at the bottom or top of a screen, important elements of news or sports video content such as captions, scrolling text with headlines, scores, weather and time information, statistics, stock tickers, and other important objects may be obscured or rendered illegible. Non-linear advertisements comprise images, such as logos and icons and textual data appearing in a predefined portion of a visible frame of video content. Current non-linear advertisement placement techniques can also result in incompatible color combinations with respect to adjacent colors in frames of video content the non-linear advertisements are placed in. For example, current techniques can result in illegible and/or garish advertisements due to color combinations that are incompatible with or in stark contrast to adjacent video content.
These prior solutions do not provide automated matching of ovelays with video content based on properties of the video content and the overlay. Traditional advertisement placement techniques do not allow automated determination of unobtrusive locations for placing advertisements based on identification of important objects within video content. These techniques also lack a way for automatic or interactive selection of an advertisement location from amongst alternative unobtrusive locations based on relative saliency of alternative locations.